The Shutdown Will Become the Siege of the ObamaCare Teahadists

If you’re paying any attention to the worsening drama here in DC, dig in because the calendar is not our friend.  With the stalemate over the government shutdown ossifying, the Congress just backed into the debt ceiling, which we’ll hit in less than two weeks.  Now we’re going to need a big deal both reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling to get out of this mess, at the very moment postions are hardening.  A few days ago, I thought a shutdown would go on for about a week…now I’m thinking it might be a month, or even longer.  And that could have big implications for ObamaCare, Medicare and Medicaid.

The supreme irony of this week has been watching right-wing House Republicans shutdown the government over ObamaCare, on the very day ObamaCare launches and almost crashes because so many Americans want it.  There is no clearer evidence of the lunacy of the anti-ObamaCare dead-enders.  This shutdown and manufactured budget crisis never had a chance of stopping ObamaCare.  It’s doubly ironic because as the exchanges launch and stumble, its harshest critics are now trying to figure out what they want.

Compounding failures in stopping ObamaCare, resoundingly negative public opinion, and legislative charades like a string of piecemeal “reopen this favorite monument and federal agency that I voted to close” are strengthening the right’s resolve, but for what? One of them, conservative Representative Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) summed it up today: “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” The fight has become a zero-sum game — if the Democrats win, Republicans lose — and it’s taken on a life of its own. A moderate Republican, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-NY), said “This is not just about ObamaCare anymore.”

Head.  Banging.

As the extremists — let’s call them the ObamaCare Teahadists — about 40 in the House and 15 in the Senate — move the goalposts, we’re backing into the Oct. 17 deadline to raise the $16.7 trillion national debt ceiling.  Cold reality set in here in DC today that the shutdown and debt ceiling are now intertwined…and the President has been rock-solid that he will not negotiate on the latter.  Preparations are being made to dig in for a long siege.  And that has implications for our favorite government-sponsored health programs.

The launch of the ObamaCare exchanges this week were predictably messy.  The big story has been the astounding level of interest — over 7 million unique visitors nationally in three days, more than Southwest Airlines’ website gets in a month, over 100,000 phone consultations. Several state-based exchanges like Maryland had to delay full openings. California overestimated its volume, literally, by 900%. New York and a handful of states had isolated reports of right-wing bloggers and commentators urging their followers to clog phone lines and ping exchange websites, literally waging electronic warfare against ObamaCare.

The Department of Health and Human Services furloughed over half its workforce this week but hundreds of CMS staffers are soldiering on, unpaid, trying to get this plane off the ground.  Tech glitches with the CMS data hub and holes in healthcare.gov made raw by the volume prevented more than a few thousand applications from being accreted this week.  Several former colleagues of mine in the agency acknowledged that eligibility and enrollment vendors signed just weeks ago weren’t ready to go, but that there was no moving the start date. “It’s going to be weeks of crises and workarounds trying to make this work by January 1, all while we’re getting bombed by the Taliban on the Hill,” one said.

By next week media attention will turn from high interest to insufficient results of open enrollment, and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will be forced to play a shell game with her department’s budget to reinforce the exchange staff in the middle of a shutdown.  One casualty already: the Centers for Disease Control’s annual flu vaccination campaign got iced, right on the brink of flu season, with direct implications for Medicare and Medicaid plans.  All of this will put more fire in the Teahadists’ bellies, entrenching positions further: longer shutdown, longer debt crisis.  To whit, as House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) just said: “With Obamacare proving to be a train wreck, the president’s insistence on steamrolling ahead with this flawed program is irresponsible. It’s time for the President and Senate Democrats to come to the negotiating table and drop their my-way-or-the-highway approach that gave us this shutdown.”

Wooooo-sahhhhh.

This doesn’t start to get too ugly for Medicare Advantage, Part D, or Medicaid plans unless this nonsense stretches longer than 30 days.  But if we’re still at impasse heading into Thanksgiving — and that is very much a possibility now — we could be looking at the winter of our discontent in government-sponsored health programs.  With a side of Tea.

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